Black Holes ain't so black...

[Slick]

I don't know the details of his newest theory, but in "A Brief History of Time", he mentions that black holes can "evaporate". This happens when a pair of "virtual" particles (one particle and one anti-particle) are created just outside the event horizon. Some of the time, only the anti-particle falls into the black hole. This then annihilates some of the matter in the black hole, thus reducing its mass, while the particle from the other half of the pair escapes and can be seen as "radiation" from the black hole. Obviously this theory has been modified or maybe even replaced by his newer one. I hope Hawking writes another book before he dies.

Slick.